Google has done it again. It has released a new update to its search algorithm that is aimed at boosting the visibility of websites customized for smartphones and penalize the websites who don’t adhere to a mobile friendly website. This is hence appropriately been termed as Mobilegeddon by the industry watchers. The reports are that Google is looking out for best experience for their users both on desktop and mobile, and if your business or website cannot make the cut, then they stand to get penalized. Google has been planning on this update since months beforehand, and it was announced in their blog earlier this year, that websites that are not mobile friendly will get penalized by it.
You don’t have to worry if your website is optimized to be viewed on a mobile device. However, for all others, it is a cause of special concern for if they don’t adhere to the latest guidelines from Google, their search rankings are all set to plummet. You can check the link https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly in order to determine whether your page is mobile friendly or not. On the other hand, two important features of this update are worth to be noted. The first is that this update only affects search rankings on mobile devices and the second feature is that this update applies to individual pages, not to entire websites. However, one has now to make sure that the websites are now designed as per the guidelines given by Google according to this update.
The first best practice to follow is not showing the same website on different size screens, as one cannot shrink websites that were made for larger screens. However, looking at things from a different perspective, the practice of calling this update an end of everything is a hyperbole since websites and web designers have been living up with the responsive design since 2007, since it was a huge challenge to get the same UX on mobile sites as on the sites meant for desktops. In addition to this, the search algorithm of Google takes into account more than 200 other factors, and not just the mobile guidelines in isolation.
The reason for this update has underscored the importance of smartphones and the mobile revolution where they are expanding their user bases by a large number. As per the own number of Google, about fifty percent of searches now happen on mobile devices. However, the experience is not as smooth as it is on desktops, since many people often use local smartphone apps in turn of websites, and hence many websites are not suited to mobile phones. By improving the state of the mobile web, Google is making its search engine more attractive and by doing this, it makes more money. The underlining reason for this is that if the user experience on the smart phones is frustrating or poor, and there is a lot of content that is unreadable on the smartphones, people are less inclined to use Google search. This may lead to a decline in the volume of searches, and if the search traffic declines, Google wouldn’t be able to serve the quantum of ads they are serving now.
There is a simple way to cope up with this update, and that is to make your website mobile responsive. The few elements that make up a mobile responsive site is that fonts of the website should be clearly readable on the mobile screen, users don’t have to scroll from left to right on their mobile screens while viewing content on a website and the page loads fasts so that users don’t have to wait forever before the page loads on their mobile screens. In addition, you may have to take care of the format of videos that will affect whether a site is considered mobile friendly or not, so you have to ensure that all the video content is playable on mobile devices. You also have to check your links, and make sure that your mobile site is not directing users to a page formatted for desktops. By making such small but significant changes, you can easily surpass the effects of Mobilegeddon and may even get rewarded by Google by having a mobile responsive website. All the best.
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